


get a load of this monster

by ObscureReference



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Astral Projection, Invisible Kingdom | Valla, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 08:15:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14160573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObscureReference/pseuds/ObscureReference
Summary: Odin lifted his chin. Anankos did not have a traditional set of eyes like other dragons he had met, but he did his best to meet their gaze anyway.“For ones so pitiful and weak,” he said, using his best performance voice. “we seem to be doing pretty well without you, aren’t we?”Evidently that was the wrong thing to say.





	get a load of this monster

**Author's Note:**

> I really wanted to write something involving Niles/Odin but rather than write a fluff piece like I thought I wanted to, I wrote this AU instead, lmao. I can't do anything if it's not some kind of magical AU in any way, shape, or form, it appears. I hope you guys get a kick out of this anyway. Also, I'm still practicing to get Anankos' voice right. I never know exactly how I want to write him.
> 
> (Also have you seen those new Fire Emblem Warrior Owain Supports? I've been blessed.)
> 
> Title taken from "This is Home" by cavetown.

It was not only the floor that was coated in dust and dirt so thick that Odin could have left footprints in his wake had held enough presence to leave footprints at all. The entirety of the central hall was decrepit and held the air of a chamber that had not been disturbed in a long, long time. This was a forgotten place.

He looked around, already knowing what he would find. The ceilings were high and cracked, the pillars practically crumbling under their own weight. Deep gouges were etched in the base of the pillars, the floors, on the wall so high that Odin couldn’t have reached them even if he stood on someone else’s shoulders. They overlapped one another, evidence of years of rampage and grief. Dust lay stagnant in the air, as though it was frozen in time just as much as oppressive stench of corruption seemed to be. It was a wonder the once great hall had not collapsed in on itself after years of abuse and disuse.

This was not the place Odin had fallen asleep.

He knew where he was.

A low growl resounded from the other side of the hall—one so unnatural that it made Odin clench his jaw. The resident of the hall knew it had a visitor.

 ** _“SO_** ,” the Silent Dragon rumbled. “ ** _YOU HAVE RETURNED.”_**

Odin shrugged.

Their first meeting had not been nearly so casual. There had been a lot of confusion and boasting and barely concealed fear. Selena had been there. They stood side by side in their pajamas—Odin had actually lacked a shirt—and stared determinedly ahead as though they could singlehandedly take on a mad dragon at least fifty times their size with no warning, no weapons, and no way out.

Odin had shielded his face with his hand on instinct, recreating his signature pose as best he could with shaking knees and no idea how they were going to get out of this.

“ _Pre-pare,_ ” he’d began, his voice cracking. He cleared his throat and tried again, ignoring the look Selena sent his way. “Prepare yourself, fiend!” It was not his best material, but he was cutting himself some slack at the short notice. “Clearly you are more desperate than you’re willing to admit, considering the cowardly magic you’ve called upon to corner us alone. But behold! Such underhanded tricks will not hold up under the mighty power of chosen heroes! Even with only two of us, a foul beast such as yourself is still no match for Odin Dark, Commander of Shadows, Destroyer of Armies, Vanquisher of—"

 ** _“IT IS_ YOU _WHO HAVE SNUCK INTO MY HOME LIKE THIEVES IN THE NIGHT,”_** Anankos had countered, his voice cutting through Odin and Selena’s panic and fake bravado more effectively than any sword. “ ** _NOW, VERMIN,_ YOU _WILL TELL ME WHAT MAGIC HAS WROUGHT THIS INSOLENCE AND, PERHAPS IF YOU BEG, I WILL GRANT YOU A SWIFT DEATH.”_**

Selena, fists raised and head held high, said, “Kiss my ass.”

Anakos had swiped at them with one massive arm.

His claws passed through them like they were ghosts.

They had all stared at that. At least, Selena and Odin had, exchanging wide-eyed glances and holding their hands up in the low light to search for the places where they had apparently become see-through. there were none.

Anankos did not stare so much as he threw a tantrum, _screeching_ , howling about disgusting humans and their filthy magic, incomparable to his own.

Odin had ignored this and reached out. He dragged his arm through a large chunk of fallen debris with no resistance, his finger disappearing entirely within the rock. He pulled his hand back.

“We’re not here,” he’d found himself saying, unheard over the sound of Anankos’ anguish. He turned his head and found Selena looking back at him, dust swirling like a halo above her hair. “This isn’t real.”

A chunk of rock fell from above—as large as a fist, certainly—whizzed past Selena’s head. She jumped back and warily scanned the ceiling. Odin watched her absently pinch herself even as she craned her head back to watch for more falling debris. She winced.

“It feels pretty real,” she’d muttered. And then Anankos had breathed his awful purple fire and caught both of them in the blast. It didn’t burn.

When the fire subsided and they could see each other again, Selena blinked hard and said, “Okay, maybe not so real.”

They’d crept out of Anankos’ chambers as he’d roared and wailed at the unfairness of the world and humans and how he would destroy it all one day. What had begun as a very intimidating speech had become less so as they realized how little said dragon’s speech mattered when he couldn’t _do_ anything about it. At least, not them in that moment.

Selena and Odin had hidden just outside the door and asked each other different variations of “What in the world is happening?” until an immeasurable amount of time passed, and they woke up in their own beds. Both of them had thought it a very strange, realistic dream until the subject had been brought up a few days later.

The next night Selena had appeared in Anankos’ chambers alone. She said it had been much of the same.

The day after that, Laslow reported, clearly shaken but physically unharmed, that he too had found himself having dreams of Valla so vivid they could be nothing but real and could they please figure this out already?

On the fourth night all three of them appeared in Anankos’ great hall, and any insisting that they didn’t _want_ to be there fell on deaf ears. Odin wondered if they should have even said that much considering having their greatest enemy believe they also possessed limitless magic and could appear in his home at any moment seemed like a good advantage to have. It didn’t appear to matter, however, because the dragon Anankos never really listened to anything they said. He simply issued threats he could not back up and shook the cavern with his voice when he became too enraged. Occasionally he spat fire in their direction as an intimidation tactic, but all three of them eventually stopped reflexively dodging out of the way, and Anankos eventually understood that they weren’t very afraid anymore and sulked as much as great dragons could when they appeared.

When all three of them woke up each morning, still safe in their beds in Nohr, they all prepared themselves for sudden attacks from encroaching invisible soldiers sent under Anankos’ thrall. But none came.

Maybe it was because Anankos was still more or less trying to hide his presence, Selena theorized. Laslow suggested that Anankos may not have known where they actually were, aside from some place outside Valla. It could have been a number of other reasons that Anankos did not send assassins or caravans of invisible killers their way. It was impossible to determine the truth without asking, and none of them planned to for fear of giving the dragon good ideas.

Eventually it was determined that the most likely reason for their nightly visits had something to do with the now dead human part of Anankos, who had been the one to tear Selena, Odin, and Laslow from their home world and thrust them into this new one. Even splintered, the human and dragon parts of Anankos had no doubt still held a connection, and perhaps that connection had been fostered off on the three of them due to the same magic that had been used to bring them to Valla in the first place, especially now that the human Anankos had died.

The specifics of _how_ this had happened and the reasons as to why it was only now that this connection kept pulling their consciousnesses from their minds at night and projecting them into Valla was another mystery altogether.

At this point, it had become more of an inconvenience than a threat.

It wasn’t every night that they appeared in Anankos’ chambers, and it wasn’t even all three of them who visited at once. _Sometimes_ it was all three. More often it was just one or two of them who visited, on random nights in random combinations. Laslow once appeared in front of Anankos every night for a week, and he’d complained endlessly of the restless sleep he was getting until there were no more visits had by anyone for another two weeks.

They had been a good two weeks.

Realistically, Odin knew he was still lying in bed. None of them were ever _physically_ in Valla. It wasn’t even that he was dreaming, because normal dreams were not shared by anyone unless they were prophetic and these visits were prophesizing nothing. They just _were_. 

Back in the present moment, Anankos growled lowly at Odin’s shrug. He did not sound quite as menacing as he had during their first visit. He used to snap and lung at them the moment any of them appeared.

Now, even if Anankos did not seem at all content with their unwelcomed presence, he was at least… mostly accepting. Or he at least understood that snapping and lunging fruitlessly only served to frustrate himself more. Or so Odin assumed. Suffice to say, the fallen dragon was not much one for chatter.

Odin kicked at the dusty floor. None of the dust swirled up in the satisfying way it might have had he actually been physically present.

He could have turned around and exited the main hall, leaving Anankos alone in the silence. He had done it before. He could have found a nice perch and rested his eyes for a while. He could have even plopped down right where he stood and engaged a dragon with too many eyes in a staring contest. They had done that before too. A lot of the things Odin did when he visited involved ignoring Anankos. It was easier that way.

This night, Odin did none of those things.

Instead, he quietly wandered over to the other side of the hall, closer to Anankos’ looming form, feeling the weight of piercing yellow eyes on him as he moved. The pressure of being watched weighed heavily on his shoulders despite the fact he knew Anankos was no real threat at the moment. Odin walked as close as he dared without Anankos suddenly snapping his massive jaw at him. While it certainly didn’t hurt, sudden movement like that always made Odin flinch and he wanted to save face as much as possible.

Anankos made a low noise when he got too close. Odin stopped.

They stared at each other for a long moment. The air remained still. A tiny speck of dust floated level with Odin’s eye.

“We’re going to kill you,” Odin said at last.

Once, on a humid, murky morning, an unusually quiet Laslow confessed that he’d promised the dragon Anankos that they would put him out of his misery.

“Promised?” Selena had echoed. “You guys had an actual _conversation_?”

“Ah, not exactly.” Laslow scratched the back of his neck. “It was more like me talking _at_ him, I suppose?” He’d laughed, though it hadn’t sounded mirthful. “I admit, he didn’t seem to appreciate it very much. But I thought, if any part of the Mr. Anankos we’d met still existed in him…”

“That it would be a comfort,” Odin finished for him, and Laslow had looked at him gratefully.

Odin wasn’t so sure any part of that human Anankos still existed within the mad dragon before him. The human part of Anankos had died in the dirt after shouting at the three of them to run, to make it out of Valla and into Nohr, to find his child and save his kingdom. That part of Anankos—the rational, kind part that still loved his kingdom—was long gone.

Odin did not say what he did believing some kindred spirit was listening in from the dragon’s decayed shell. He did not promise this Anankos’ defeat out of comfort so much as it simply was what it was—a promise.

Anankos rumbled, perhaps amused. It sounded very much like a growl.

 ** _“ARROGANT HUMANS LIKE YOURSELF DISGUST ME THE MOST_** ,” Anankos said. “ ** _YOU ARE ALL WEAK, PITIFUL WORMS, IGNORANT OF EVEN A GOD IN YOUR MIDST._** ”

His voice was tinged with melancholy and hatred. It was not difficult to infer that the “god” Anankos was referring to was himself.

Odin had been told that Anankos had loved humans, once upon a time. In return, they had loved him back.

Now this was what he had become.

He was, Odin thought, a little sad.

He was also a killer.

Odin refused to avert his eyes.

Another morning after a visit, Selena had sighed heavily, her brows pinched, and complained that Anankos had thrown a real fit that night and she’d woken up feeling even more restless than normal.

“He just kept _talking_ ,” Selena complained. “Eventually I said, ‘Will you shut up? I know you’re there. You don’t have to talk _all_ the time.’”

Somewhere in the background, Laslow choked. Selena ignored him.

She said, “And then suddenly he was all like, ‘Do you? _Do_ you know?’” She finished her grumbled imitation of the dragon by blowing her bangs out of her eyes and squinting into the sunlight. “And then he started yelling about humans and their short memories or whatever. Eventually I just left. Ugh, he gave me the _biggest_ headache.”

She’d paused, her eyes sliding to some point off into the distance. Suddenly she’d said, “Do you think the others still think of us back home?”

Odin lifted his chin. Anankos did not have a traditional set of eyes like other dragons he had met, but he did his best to meet their gaze anyway.

“For ones so pitiful and weak,” he said, using his best performance voice. “we seem to be doing pretty well without you, aren’t we?”

Evidently that was the wrong thing to say.

Where he had once been laying on his stomach—not exactly relaxed but at least not on the verge of attacking at any given moment—Anankos now reared back, whipping his head back and forth like a whip in his sudden, seething rage. He came close to smashing his long neck against the pillars in his fury, and Odin took an instinctive step back, his stomach dropping even though he had no reason to be afraid.

 ** _“WITHOUT ME?”_** Anankos bellowed. “ ** _W I T H O U T  M E?”_**

The cavern shook. Odin slipped onto his back with a gasp, unable to keep himself upright as the floor rocked beneath his feet.

He’d never heard Anankos use that tone of voice before. It shook the very foundations of the hall as much as it shook Odin’s bones. Anankos did not seem to notice or care.

He howled, “ ** _HUMANS! HUMANS! I MADE THEM WHAT THEY WERE! I PROVIDED FOR THEM! I TAUGHT THEM! AND THEY TOOK AND TOOK AND TOOK—"_**

Odin flipped onto his stomach, struggling to push himself to his feet.

**_“—AND NOW I AM THE FORGOTTEN? THE SILENT? WHY SHOULD I BE BURDENED TO SUFFER SUCH A FATE? DID I NOT PROTECT THEM IN TIMES OF NEED? DID I NOT SACRIFICE ENOUGH FOR THE FATES’ SATISFACTION?”_ **

It occurred to Odin, as he once again failed to find stable footing, that he had made a mistake in engaging with the enemy rather than ignoring him in silence as Odin had every time he’d visited for the past month. He’d let his urge to engage and face the villain of the story head-on win out over his common sense.

Of course, at the time his common sense had told him that he’d only have to listen to some pointless rambling in exchange for his own posturing, not that he might have to deal with the threat that perhaps the cavern would collapse on top of them both in Anankos’ rage after all.

Well. You lived, and you learned, he thought.

**_“WHY? WHY? WHYWHYWHYWHYWHY—"_ **

The foundation under Odin shifted, stones splitting apart right underfoot, and Odin yelped as he fell to his knees again. A fresh wave of dust and rock fell from the ceiling.

**_“—WHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHY—"_ **

Instantly there was a new pressure on top of him, a strange weight pressing against Odin’s chest like he’d never before felt in Anankos’s chambers, threatening to crush him—

It was Niles’ arm.

Odin came to this realization as he found himself jerking upright in bed, only for the arm Niles had strewn across his chest to press him back down, his fingers almost digging into Odin’s shoulder. Odin’s head hit the pillow with a small grunt. He breathed in sharply. The air was clean and cool.

He turned his head.

“Some kind of nightmare?” Niles asked, looking as though he’d been awake for a while. His hair was tangled, but his good eye looked nothing short of fully alert.

Odin squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them again, letting himself adjust the darkness. Somehow it felt darker in the bedroom than it had in the dingy, near abandoned castle.

“Something like that,” he said. His voice sounded dryer than he had expected, and his eyes slid away from Niles’s face to scan the room instead. Even after his eyes had adjusted, it still seemed a little too dark. Nohr always did.

It was probably the lack of candles in the room. The night, however, was also a strangely cloudless for Nohr, and the sickly yellow light of the full moon helped to illuminate the bedroom just enough for Odin’s tired eyes to navigate it. Niles always had liked having the window open when they weren’t on the ground floor, he thought.

Niles hummed. He released Odin’s shoulder, and his palm slid over Odin’s chest until it settled over his heart.

“And here I thought I was the only thing that got your heart pounding,” Niles said.

Odin snorted.

Niles felt good. Tangible.

He made a sheepish mental note to tell Selena and Laslow to be a little more delicate the next time they visited Anankos. The dragon was sure to be more sensitive than normal the next time they showed up. Laslow and Selena were probably going to complain about it, and Odin wouldn’t blame them. They’d just have to walk around the castle rather than sit in the main hall to avoid him for a while if they wanted to keep the tantrums to a minimum. Odin thought that’s what they did most of the time anyway, so it shouldn’t have been too big of an inconvenience.

He realized he’d been staring at the ceiling for too long, so he turned his head to look at Niles again. Niles looked back with that curiously blank expression he always wore when he was trying to figure something out. Odin reached up and tangled his hand with the one Niles had pressed against his bare chest. His fingers felt a little cold compared to Niles’s warm skin.

“Shouldn’t you be asleep?” he asked.

Niles grinned, all sharp edges. “Darling, if you wanted to sleep with me, all you had to do was ask.”

Odin rolled his eyes.

Niles had sharp wit and even sharper observational skills, and he left an empty beat in the conversation for Odin to open his mouth and discuss the “nightmare” he believed Odin had just experienced. Odin appreciated it.

He said nothing. It wasn’t like he was the only one with topics he didn’t discuss.

After a beat Niles closed his eye and hummed thoughtfully. He eyed the open window and the dark that stretched out before them. There was no way he saw any early morning light creeping over the window sill, and yet Niles said, “We can always get an early start to the day, if you’d like.”

“You can do whatever you want,” Odin said, rolling onto his side and flipping his pillow over to press his cheek against its cool side. “Odin Dark’s soul yearns for a few more hours of blessed sleep.”

“Is that so?”

“As does Niles the Fierce, if I am not mistaken.”

“So I have an epithet as well now. I would have expected something with a little more darkness behind it, considering your penchant for it. Niles the Wicked, at the very least.”

“I would be honored to bestow upon you a title of the greatest honor and intimidation factor,” Odin mumbled, closing his sore eyes. “In the morning.”

That earned him a chuckle, and a bit of satisfaction fluttered in Odin’s chest before he felt Niles’s arm curl around his torso and up his back. There were fingers along his scalp, ghosting the spaces where hair met neck. Even with monsters lurking in far forgotten corners of the world, there would be nothing that could or would touch them this night. Not with Odin and Niles pressed close together like so.

“I think I’ll sleep fine now,” Odin said quietly, closer to the realm of dreams than not. He didn’t think he’d visit Anankos again tonight. Not after being so suddenly thrust away. “Thank you.”

Niles still grazed the very ends of Odin’s hair with his fingertips. It almost tickled. He hummed again, quietly, something unidentifiable in his tone, and Odin took that for an answer.

He drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm marking this as complete, but I actually really like this AU and may write a follow up with Selena or Laslow or both later. We'll see. I'm actually kinda into it though. I thought about waiting until I had written their parts before posting this, but then it might never be posted at all, RIP. So we'll see how it goes. 
> 
> Feel free to leave a comment below or hit me up on my [tumblr!](http://someobscurereference.tumblr.com/) I get a lot of FE14 meta and fic related asks there, so feel free to browse through my "asks" or "fe14" tag for some extra stuff from me and your fellow readers you may not see over here. Or send in a question of your own if you had one. Thanks for reading!


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